


please forgive me (demons in my head)

by rain (meggowo)



Series: whumptober 2020 [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Angst, Blood and Gore, Demonic Possession, Gen, I'm so sorry, Violence, Whumptober 2020, everyone dies, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 09:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26849740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meggowo/pseuds/rain
Summary: Day 6: "Get it out!"The Seven Birds Paranormal Investigators take on a mission that should be textbook, but Taako has a bad feeling about it.---“Lup,” he croaked out, and it was only then that she moved, at his side in seconds.“Taako!” and her arms were around him, warm and safe.“Please,” Taako hiccuped, tears streaming down his cheeks, “get it out!”
Relationships: Lup & Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Series: whumptober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955155
Comments: 8
Kudos: 6





	please forgive me (demons in my head)

**Author's Note:**

> god. okay this fic is a whammy. pls don't take the tags lightly, oh my gOD.
> 
> next fic should be up on october 8th but we shall see because i Still haven't come up with anything for it jkhsdfk. there will definitely be one up on october 9th though!!
> 
> the title comes from the song demons by hayley kiyoko because i'm a huge lesbian and i needed something about this fic to make me smile
> 
> i hope y'all enjoy, this is probably the angstiest thing i've written thus far, so pls keep that in mind omfg xx

It was bright and sunny, the perfect autumn day; the van was full of gas and the windows were down, letting in the cool fall air. Faint music played over the speakers from Lup’s phone, but nobody was paying attention, too busy yelling back and forth to each other. Taako’s head pounded.  _ It’s too early for anyone to be this awake.  _

He leaned his head against the window, lucky for once to have not been shoved in the back middle seat between Merle and Magnus. Lucretia had taken one look at the bags under his eyes and given him her spot in the shotgun seat, and he would never dream of turning down an offer like that.

The sky outside was a clear blue; the sun just peeking over the horizon, filling the trees with colour and life with its golden glow. The bright reds, oranges, and yellows would have been beautiful if it wasn’t seven in the morning, and Taako forced his eyes shut against the brightness.  _ Stupid fucking job.  _ He could just hear Lup’s voice telling him that he was lucky he wasn’t stuck in an office job or some shit like that, at least their jobs had  _ some  _ flexibility, and he scowled.  _ Stupid fucking sister. _ Speaking of which-

“Aw, what’s Mister Grumpy upset about now? Do you have too much space up there?” Lup said, voice high pitched and grating as if she were talking to a child.

“You know damn well why I’m tired, Lulu,” Taako responded irritably. Barry’s cheeks reddened on the other side of his sister.

“I sure do,” she pretty much purred back, and Barry hid his face in his hands, glasses pushed up into his hair.

“Ooooo!” Magnus crooned from the back seat. Thank god Julia had decided not to come along for this trip, Taako didn’t think he could handle two couples who had it out for him.  _ Assholes. _

“Settle down back there,” Davenport called jokingly from the driver’s seat, the laughter he was holding back clear in his voice, “don’t make me turn this car around!”

Merle chuckled, old enough to be Dav’s father, “Yeah, sure,  _ dad,” _

Lup laughed brightly, and Taako’s headache pulsed with the noise. “... _ fuck.”  _ he muttered, bringing his hands up to rub at his temple.

When he opened his eyes again, Lup was looking at him, concerned in a way that he was sure only he could see. Her expression still looked light and normal, but her brows furrowed slightly in a way that told him she was worried. She was probably doing her freaky empath stuff again, he could never hide anything from her. “... You doing okay, ‘Ko?”

Taako sighed. She knew he hated early mornings, knew that the headaches were normal, but there was just…  _ something  _ about today that felt wrong, his limbs were tense with an anticipation that had been part of the reason why he’d had so much trouble relaxing enough to sleep the night before. Things like that had happened before and Lucretia said it was some (stupid) part of his powers, but it had never been this strong. He almost wanted to grab the wheel to the van himself and turn them around instead of continuing to wherever they were going.

Why couldn’t he have gotten something helpful like Barry? The guy could  _ see ghosts  _ for fuck’s sake. All Taako got were stupid, unhelpful premonitions.

“What’s the mission this time again?” Taako asked, instead of answering. Lup narrowed her eyes, but she let him avoid her question and moved on.

“It’s a violent spirit, apparently, throwing shit around, breaking windows, spooking the residents, the usual. Should be a quick, in-and-out thing, ‘Creesh should be able to calm it down pretty easily! We’re probably overprepared at this point!” Lucretia’s cheeks darkened at her words.

Taako met her eyes again, and that weird, intense sense of  _ wrong  _ peaked, rising in his lungs like water, making it hard to breathe. He could tell she felt his fear, but she just gave him another concerned glance and patted his shoulder with the hand that her boyfriend wasn’t holding, before turning back towards the ongoing conversation in the back seat. Taako sighed, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the seat, trying to calm down. Hopefully, everything would be back to normal by the time they made it to the place.

The feeling only got stronger the closer they got, and by the time Dav parked in the driveway of the small farmhouse, Lup was looking sufficiently freaked out as well. While everyone went around to the back of the van to pull their equipment from the trunk, she walked around to the front seat where he was sitting and opened the door. He didn’t open his eyes, focusing on keeping his breathing even and calm, though he could hear her as she moved forward and grabbed his shaking hands in her own.

She sank into him in a hug and rested her chin on his shoulder. “Give me the word and I’ll tell them to get back in the car. We can just ditch, it’ll be fine.”

Taako shook his head, “Let’s just get this over with.”   


“You sure?” she asked, pulling back just enough to be able to see his face. “It could be really dangerous if you’re feeling this upset about it.”

“Nobody knows how my fucking powers work,” Taako rolled his eyes, forcing a smirk, “Maybe I’m just traumatized by having to hear my own sister getting it on in the next-”

Lup threw her hands over his mouth, screeching out a protest. “Ok, if you’re feeling well enough to tease me, then you’re feeling well enough to get your ass out of the car.  _ Come on!” _

Taako smiled, and this time it didn’t feel forced. He could feel himself calming down for the first time since the night before, that tight ball of anxiety slowly unfurling in his gut, and he forced out a slow breath, letting his hands relax from the tight fists he’d been holding in his lap, and got out of the car.

The house was a good-sized farmhouse, all old white wood and brick with gingerbreading along the roof. There was a little patio out front with a couple of rocking chairs, like the kind his and Lup’s late aunt used to keep at her house. The front door was the one thing that stood out - it was painted a saturated, blood red, that stood out starkly against the peeling white paint of the rest of the house, making the dark windows feel emptier, less inviting.

Taako had only seen one house he wanted to go in less, and he forced that memory out of his mind before Lup could pick up on his anxiety again.

He forced himself towards the door, ignoring Magnus as he tried to get his attention, and stuck his tongue out at him when he whined.

“If Jules were here,  _ she  _ would help me!”

Taako gave him a look. “Do I look like your wife?”

Magnus rolled his eyes lightheartedly and turned back to his boxes.

Taako waited on the stairs up to the porch while the rest of the Seven Birds Paranormal Investigators finished gathering up their things. The name was a bit inaccurate, though he, Lup, Magnus, Merle, Lucretia, Davenport, and Barry had been the ones to start the group when they’d met in college, they’d been joined by a few others as well; Magnus’s wife Julia, Taako’s fiancé Kravitz, his pseudo-son Angus, and Lucretia’s friends Carey and Killian. They were a small group, and they usually all went on missions together, but this one was supposedly smaller than the last few they’d done together. This was the first mission in a while where it was just the seven of them, and it felt kind of nostalgic. Taako wished he had been more present during the drive down. Well, whatever, there was always the journey back. They would probably stop at a McDonalds for lunch, grab something greasy and gross and  _ normal  _ to try and ground themselves after they finished dealing with the paranormal.

It didn’t take long for the rest of them to gather at the bottom of the steps, they’d done this enough for unpacking and loading the van to be second nature. They all stood there, and for a moment, it didn’t feel different from any other job. And then Taako looked back to the red door, and Merle’s voice rang out from the end of the driveway, only his arms and legs visible from behind the box he was carrying.

“Can someone grab the door? I can’t see where I’m going!”

Taako got to his feet and dusted off his pants; he might as well grab the door since he wasn’t carrying anything. Climbing the steps felt like walking through jello, like the closer he got to the door the more his body resisted the movement. His vision tunnelled in on the dark, metal doorknob, and the minute he touched it, the cold leeched the warmth from his body as if he’d just stepped into a blast freezer. He felt the cold claw at his skin, felt a lump rising in his throat, and all he could hear was the rushing in his ears and  _ wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong- _

“Taako?” Lup’s voice broke him out of whatever stupor he’d fallen into. “Everything alright?”

Instead of answering, he wrenched the door open

and fell into shadow.

He came to in a room that he didn’t recognize, with a dusty desk and a window looking out at the driveway where he’d just been standing, a rusted axe that he didn’t recognize gripped in his hands. He heard something crashing around on the floor above him, Lup’s voice cutting through the muffled yelling.

“GIVE ME BACK MY BROTHER, DICKHEAD!”

…  _ What?  _

Taako felt confused and alarmed; it was like all of the fear he’d been feeling for the past twenty-four hours had reached its peak, plateau-ing and freezing in place, so that he could hardly make himself move let alone work through it. He tried to take a step towards a dirty armchair that was sat in the corner, but his body just  _ wouldn’t move _ . He tried to put down the axe when he realized that  _ he couldn’t feel the weight of it in his arms, couldn’t feel the pressure of the wood against his hands.  _ Couldn’t feel the short inhale or exhale of his body while he panted for breath, or the burn of his lungs and legs whenever he’d moved fast enough to do so.

Something laughed behind him, and he wished he could turn around to see what it was-was glad that he couldn’t-wanted desperately to run far away from whatever the fuck was making that  _ god-forsaken noise.  _

“I thought you were smarter than this,” the voice said, low and gruff, still laughing, “don’t you realize that you never should’ve come here?”

A cold chill shook Taako, an icy breeze as he realized what was going on. He tried desperately to keep his rising terror under control, because  _ yes,  _ he should’ve known from the start what this was. He knew this feeling, knew what the intense feeling of  _ wrong  _ meant, and now it was too late. He shoved down the memories of his aunt, suddenly feeling shivery and nauseous, a weird feeling when he couldn’t quite feel his own body.

_ You’re a demon, _ he thought, fear gripping him like icy cold fingers.

_ Yeah, I am,  _ the demon thought back, and Taako could feel his own face carve itself into a menacing grin, “Time to get this party started!”

And then his body was moving, and it felt so,  _ so  _ unnatural. Taako could still hear and see what was around him, but it was as if everything outside of that didn’t exist. His body was moving silently in a way he could’ve never achieved, the demon knew just where to step to avoid creaky floorboards, where to step to avoid creating too much of a shadow. They rounded the corner, and Taako could see Magnus standing at the bottom of the stairs. The demon crept up behind him and raised the axe, and Taako’s mind blanked out with terror.  _ No!  _ he screamed, but no sound escaped his mouth. This was the doofus he’d met in college, the guy he’d basically carried through chemistry classes three years in a row, one of his best friends, although he found it hard to express it. He yelled and screamed and shouted,  _ Stop! Stop it! Maggie, run!  _ but not a sound left his mouth.

The axe left his hand and he screamed so loudly his consciousness faded out for a second, and when his vision faded back there was Magnus; sweet, stupid Magnus lying there in a puddle of red, the axe Taako had woken up holding buried so deeply in his back that it was wedged into the floor beneath him. One of Taako’s hands, pale and blood-spattered, moved forward slowly, smoothly, and wrenched the weapon out of his back, and if Taako had control of his body he knew he would’ve been emptying his stomach all over the dusty hardwood floors.

He phased in and out of consciousness after that, he couldn’t handle it. That was his  _ friend,  _ that was his friend, and sure he wasn’t in control of it right now, but it was  _ his body that had killed him. _

He saw things. Scenes. Scenes that  _ couldn’t be real, please don’t be real. _

Davenport, limp and surrounded by pooling blood, underneath a heavy, oak bookshelf, only those stupid dress shoes he’d been wearing since Taako had walked into his history class second year poking out from under it.

Merle, the one who’d given him enough therapy to contest the hours he spent in class during college, forced to drink some poisonous concoction in a room so dark that he could barely see. Taako watched behind glass as his mouth opened in a grimace, saliva frothing between his lips tinted pink with his blood, dripping into his gray beard. He watched his dark eyes roll back in his head, watched him fall to the floor, screams muffled and terrified.

Lucretia, his first partner for a joint essay, claw marks ( _ his nail marks,  _ he had to remind himself) all up her arms and across her throat. He could see the skin and blood beneath his nails and was overcome with the urge to  _ wash, wash, wash,  _ wash until his skin was scrubbed clean off of his body, until all that was left was bone stripped white.

Barry, kindhearted Barry, dissected with the kitchen scissors, his heart, the heart that his sister had loved so dearly, left in the center of the kitchen table for her to find, along with his bespeckled head, face frozen in an eternal look of terror.

He couldn’t handle it, couldn’t handle it  _ at all,  _ not the increasingly large amount of blood on his hands and staining his clothes, not the way the house grew quieter and quieter the fewer people that were left alive.

He finally came to outside of a bathroom, a bloody axe in his left hand, and his shadow falling long in front of him like a purple bruise on the door as orange evening light came in through the window behind him. He could hear someone breathing heavily on the other side of the door, and without controlling it, his hand lifted to the doorknob. His body held its breath while his hand slowly turned it, only to find that the door was thankfully locked. He was barely feeling relief when his face shifted into a wide, warped grin, and his fist raised itself to bang heavily on the door.

His voice called out, and though it hadn’t sounded like his to begin with, it sounded worse now. Rougher. Unhinged. “Helloooooo? Open up, dear!”

Lup’s breathing went ragged. “Not unless you let my brother go, asshole! I've been feeling his fear ever since you started fucking with his head!”

“Oh, aren’t you a clever thing! It took  _ him  _ a while to catch on, I had to kill the broad one just for him to understand the gravity of the situation!” his voice was  _ gleeful. _

Lup shuffled around inside the bathroom, Taako could hear her starting to hyperventilate, and the fear that overcame him was strong, stronger than it’d been when he’d killed Magnus, stronger than it’d been watching Merle choke on his own spit. Stronger than it’d been when he’d touched that doorknob and opened the front door.

_ No no no! Leave her alone! Anyone but her, I don’t fucking care! Leave her out of this! _

The demon laughed. “He wants me to leave you alone, you know. Didn’t get  _ quite  _ this much fighting when I went after the others.”

“So he’s still in there?”  _ Shit,  _ her voice sounded so hopeful,  _ Lup, no! _

But the demon’s smile widened on his face, contorting into something that must have been downright menacing. “Why don’t you let me in and find out?”

_ LUP, NO! RUN! _

“I’m not that stupid,” she said, but her voice sounded shakier.

“Well then I guess you have however long it takes me to bash in this door to think of something to say to  _ brother dearest!”  _ the demon said, raising the bloody axe.

The door came down quickly, with only a couple swings of the axe, and then Taako could see Lup in front of him, scared and distressed out of her mind but seemingly unhurt. Her face gave him renewed vigour to fight back, claw at his mind, his  _ body,  _ try to take it back. And everything fell away, all too easily because suddenly he was falling to his knees, his entire body aching, and he was sobbing harder than he ever had before in his  _ life.  _

“ _ Lup,”  _ he croaked out, and it was only then that she moved, at his side in seconds.

“ _ Taako!”  _ and her arms were around him, warm and safe.

“ _ Please,”  _ Taako hiccuped, tears streaming down his cheeks, “ _ get it out!” _

And then he was wrenched out of his own mind again and there was a dagger in his hand, and then it was in her back, and his twin sister, his other half was coughing blood onto his shirt.

“Shhh…” the demon’s voice, sickly sweet, forced its way out of Taako’s mouth.

They pulled the knife from her back and wiped it on her shirt. And Taako couldn’t look. Couldn’t look to see Lup bleeding out on the floor because it was  _ his fault.  _ Couldn’t look because that involved thinking about all of the bodies laying on the floor around this goddamn house, his dead friends who he’d probably be seeing soon because it was  _ his fault  _ that they were dead. Couldn’t look to see the knife slowly being raised towards his own chest, laughter echoing behind his eyes. He should’ve made them all leave, should’ve known what that feeling in his gut had been. This  _ never should have happened. _

_ His fault. _

He forced himself blank. There was inky blackness. Then there was blinding hot pain.

And then there was nothing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> come scream at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/xsunshowerx)!!!
> 
> (also i made a [kofi](https://ko-fi.com/rainsmith), so if you enjoyed this or any of my other work and would like to support me, i would really appreciate it!)


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